This community innovation has been accepted at the 2025 DHIS2 Annual Conference
Integrating DHIS2 and OpenSRP for newborn Care
Despite significant progress in child health over the past decade, Bangladesh continues to face high Neonatal Mortality Rates, primarily due to preventable causes such as prematurity, low birth weight, birth asphyxia, and infections. While evidence-based interventions like Kangaroo Mother Care and Special Care Newborn Units (SCANU) exist, challenges persist in ensuring consistent care between hospitals and communities. In Bangladesh, 10-25% of SCANU-admitted babies are discharged against medical advice, and 32.7% of preterm infants require readmission, underscoring the need for effective referral systems and continuity of care. To address this, individual tracking of newborns through SCANU using DHIS2 enables longitudinal monitoring of admissions, treatments, outcomes, and follow-ups, providing actionable insights for healthcare workers. Community-level follow-up by health workers is equally critical for early detection and intervention, especially in low-resource settings. However, fragmented health information systems often hinder effective service delivery. Integrating DHIS2, which tracks facility-level data, with OpenSRP, designed for community-level tracking, offers a powerful solution. This integration facilitates real-time data exchange, automated alerts, and geo-location-based follow-ups, ensuring timely care for vulnerable newborns. Since January 2025, newborn tracking has been implemented in 10 SCANUs, with data elements mapped between DHIS2 and OpenSRP, APIs developed for seamless data exchange, and dashboards created to monitor notifications and follow-ups. This project demonstrates the potential of combining DHIS2 and OpenSRP to strengthen health systems, ensure continuum of care, and improve neonatal outcomes in Bangladesh. With 150,000 newborn admissions annually, this integrated system will give 37,500 newborns a chance to survive.
Primary Author: MUHAMMAD MASUD PARVEZ
Keywords:
Newborn Tracking, DHIS2, OpenSRP, Special Care Newborn Unit (SCANU), Health Information Systems, Community Follow-up, Digital Health Integration, Longitudinal Monitoring
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